BEIJING -- China is facing its most severe natural disasters for six years, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Thursday.

By August 15, the natural disasters that occurred this year had killed 2,006 people, affected more than 316 million people and caused economic losses of 160 billion yuan (20 billion U.S. dollars).

The disasters had also resulted in 624 people missing and 12.95 million residents being evacuated, and nearly 36 million hectares of farmland have been affected.

A total of 1.53 million houses collapsed during the disasters and more than 4.1 million were destroyed, according to the figures released by the National Center for Disaster Reduction under the ministry.

"All the figures such as the affected population, death tolls and economic losses were all above the average level of the same periods since 2001," said Wang Zhenyao, director of the center.

Compared with past years, the natural disasters this year have occurred earlier and have been stronger in scale and longer in duration. They were also more frequent and of various kinds, leading to high death tolls and great economic losses, according to Li Baojun, an official with the ministry.

In addition, the disasters this year were quite rare to some extent, officials said. "The movement of typhoons were hard to predict, like they were controlled by something," said Wang.

1

2